[xashor]

Consider donating. Zwiebelfreunde needs to pay their lawyers. Note that if you donate via IBAN, your account data will likely be in the hands of the police. At least when the next raid happens.

Zwiebelfreunde: https://www.torservers.net/donate.html

[paws]

Could you help me understand why it's a problem that your account data would be in the hands of the police?

I would have thought the reason for the raid was to collect physical evidence and that whatever the German equivalent to FinCEN[1] is could just pull anyone's financial records up anytime.

Is it simply fear of being targeted? It's not a crime to donate is it?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Crimes_Enforcement_N...

[xashor]

>whatever the German equivalent to FinCEN[1] is could just pull anyone's financial records up anytime.

In Germany it is not so easy. Even though the requirement for the state to get info about somebody's bank account is lowered, they still need some justification.

>I would have thought the reason for the raid was to collect physical evidence

For that reason alone the police wouldn't have to seize this 3d printed model of a nuclear bomb. Police stated, that „they might be planning a bomb attack“. This raid was also a display of power, to intimidate.

>why it's a problem that your account data would be in the hands of the police?

All people who donated are now on a list in some police department, maybe called „Connected to left extremism“. As donating is not a crime (both Zwiebelfreunde and RiseUp are registered organizations in their countries), this will not lead to prosecution alone.

But just because it wasn't illegal does not mean the police won't investigate if they feel like it.

And whenever they want to target you (even if the reason is unrelated), they can look up their lists and tell the judge: „Well, person X donated to this suspicous looking site, makes him suspicious, right?“ This might play a role in court or for new justifications (f.e. the police wants to raid your home, too).

[0] https://www.thueringen24.de/img/incoming/crop214771927/17338...

[paws]

I'm not familiar with the history of police misconduct in post-unification Germany, but of course whenever a judge is sympathetic to the police first it's not good for the accused.

In the US prosecutorial immunity[0][1] is one of the most mind boggling aspects of the legal system there. I'm curious does Germany have a similar rule?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutorial_immunity

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity

[xashor]

As far as I know, only parliamentarians enjoy immunity in Germany, though the parliament can detract this right from its members. But just because police/judges/… can be prosecuted, does not mean they will; in reality, only a handful of police officers and judges get convicted (mostly only when they do illegal stuff outside their job). And if they get convicted, there is hardly any penalty. People keep their jobs, maybe pay some fine. That's no surprise, the police investigates itself, and of course nobody likes to speak against their comrades. Also, law enforcement, law maker and the court system tend to be friendly to each other.

I heard the Netherlands and Britain have a better system, where an independent party investigates accusations against police officers.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Could you help me understand why it's a problem that your account data would be in the hands of the police?

I would be pretty pissed off if the NYPD compiled a database of my political donations without probable cause.

> whatever the German equivalent to FinCEN

FinCEN doesn’t have a comprehensive database of transactions. Banks, collectively, do. But for smaller non-suspicious transactions, FinCEN must reach out to banks to collect the data. Requesting political donations for lots of individuals without a warrant would be odd.

[paws]

> compiled a database of my political donations without probable cause.

I share your sentiment, I wouldn't appreciate that either of course.

I find it hard to feel optimistic about privacy in America, and in a similar way, probable cause. Three short vignettes:

1) Living in Brooklyn a couple years back I was surprised one day to see a white van with ALPR cameras slowly cruising residential streets, followed by a squad car. There was clearly some arrangement where this private company was teaming up with NYPD to boot offenders' vehicles. Ostensibly the private company had access to some NYPD database [0]. The slippery slope there makes me exceedingly uncomfortable. If a referendum happened on that one, I missed it.

2) Fast forward to Jan 2017 - shortly before Obama left office, the NSA was given significantly increased authority to share the dragnet surveillance it hoovers up [1] [2].

3) In May 2018, as you may have heard, major US carriers were caught selling real-time customer location data to private companies [3] who resold it.

Meanwhile what you might hope would be prosecutors' fear of, well, prosecution for attempting to subvert the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine for e.g. parallel construction [4] seems quite undermined by prosecutorial immunity [5].

I don't claim to be a legal expert but I do find it truly scary to think about.

What else is going on we don't know?

[0] https://paylock.com/who-we-serve/

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/politics/nsa-gets-more...

[2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/01/obama-expands-surveill...

[3] https://www.wired.com/story/locationsmart-securus-location-d...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutorial_immunity

[dannyw]

This is actually a genuine use case for cryptocurrency.